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SOUTHERN SIAYERY ATO THE CimiSTlM 

RELIGION. -i qi 



— f2^f 

COMMUNICATION FROM JUDGE STROUD. ^^;;-::n:: 

To the Editor of North American and U. S. Oazette : — 

From several pamphlets recently published and extensively 
circulated, it has become evident that a new issue in Pennsylva- 
nia party politics has been inaugurated, viz: Whether negro 
slavery, as it is maintained in the Southern States now in rebel- 
lion against the national government, is consistent with the 
Christian religion ? 

I deem it proper, therefore, in order that every one may be 
enabled to judge for himself on this important subject, to give a 
very brief summary of the legal incidents of Southern slavery. 
Every part and parcel of this summary may be authenticated by 
the statutes of one or other of those States, and the reported 
decisions of their highest courts of judicature. 

It is a fundamental principle of negro slavery that a slave is 
a thing— 2, chattel wholly under the dominion of his master, sub- 
ject to be bought and sold precisely as if he were a horse or a 
mule. He may be fed and clothed much or little, as his master 
may prescribe— may be compelled to labor as well on one day as 
another, and as hard and as long as his master may direct. ^ 

The slave has no legal right whatever ; cannot own anything; 
may be forbidden all society with his fellows; may be kept in 
the most abject ignorance; is not allowed to be instructed to 
read; is without any legal provision for acquiring a knowledge 
of his religious duties; incapable of a lawful jarriage; denied 
all authority over those who are admitted to oeHiis natural off- 
spring; liable to have them at any age torn from him, without 

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the slightest consultation or deference to his judgment or his 
feelings ; and liable himself to be torn from them, and from their 
mother, with whom he has been permitted and encouraged to 
cohabit as his wife. He may be thus ruthlessly carried to a re- 
turnless distance, not only from his children and their mother, 
but from all else that he may hold dear. 

The law also expressly sanctions his master in beating him 
with a horsewhip or cowskin, in chaining him, putting him in 
irons, compelling him to wear pronged iron collars, confining 
him in prison, hunting him with dogs, and when outlaived^ as he 
may be for running away, he may be killed by any one to whom 
he may refuse to surrender. 

The whole of this summary I pledge myself to maintain in its 
literal and full extent, according to the law of one or another of 
the Southern slaveholding States. 

GEO. M. STROUD. 

Philadelphia, Sept. 15, 1863. 

[The preceding letter of Judge Stroud, published in the "North American,"' 
of September 16, 1863, and the following extrjtcts from his sketch of the laws 
relating to slavery, are published in this form in order to give them a wider 
circulation.] 

Take the following description of slavery, as given by the 
Supreme Court o'l North Carolina in 1829: "The end (of 
slavery) is the profit of the master, his security, and the public 
safety. The subject is one doomed in his own person and his 
posterity to live without knowledge and without the capacity to 
make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the 
fruits." The State vs. Mann, 2 Devereiix Rep. 263, 2G6. (Stroud's 
Slave Laws, pp. 33-34, 2d edition.) 

The doctrine of South Carolina is equally strong. It is con- 
centrated by Wardlaw, J., in this single sentence : "Every en- 
'deavor to extend to a slave positive rights is an attempt to 
reconcile inherent contradictions ; for, in the very nature of 
things, lie is subject to DESPOTISM." Ex parte BOYLETON, 2 
Strohhart, 41. (Ibid.) 



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According to the law of Louisiana, "a slave is one who is in 

^, the power of a master to v/hom he belongs. The master may 

^ sell him, dispose of his person, his industry, and his labor : he 

^ can do nothing, possess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what 

must belong to his master." Civil Code, art 35. (Ibid.) 

The cardinal principle of slavery — that the slave is to be re- 
garded as a thing — is an article of property — a chattel personal 
— obtains as undoubted law in all of these States. In South 
Carolina it is expressed in the following language : " Slaves 
shall be deemed sold, taken, reputed and adjudged in law to be 
chattels personal in the hands of their owners and possessors, and 
their executors, and administrators and assigns, to all intents, 
constructions and purposes whatsoever^ 2 Brev. Dig. 229 ; 
Prince's Dig. 446, &c. &c. TJiompson, Dig. 183. (Ibid.) 

I. A SLAVE CANNOT BE A WITNESS AGAINST A WHITE PERSON, 
EITHER IN A CIVIL OR CRIMINAL CAUSE. 

I have had occasion very frequently to advert to this subject, 
as the cause of the greatest evils of slavery. Acts of Assembly, 
apparently intended to give protection to the slave from his 
master's cruelty, have been adduced, and yet shown to be alto- 
gether nugatory, in consequence of the rule of law which forms 
the title of this section. In trivth, in our slaveholding States 
this exclusion is not confined to the evidence of slaves; but 
natives of Africa, and their descendants, whatever may be the 
shade of their complexion, and whether bond or free, are under 
the like degrading disability.* In a few of the slaveholding 
States the rule derives authority from custom; in others, the 
legislatures have sanctioned it by express enactment. In Vir- 
ginia there is an act of Assembly in these words : "Any negro 
or mulatto, bond or free, sliall be a good witness in pleas of the 
commonwealth for or against negroes or mulattoes, bond or free, 
or in civil pleas where free negroes or mulattoes shall alone be 
parties, and in no other cases whatever.'^ 1 B. f. G. 422. 

> In Texas this restriction is confined to sucli persons to tlie third 
generation only. Texas Dig. 219-220. 



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Similar in Misso^^n ; 2 MissouA Lcnvs, 600. In Mississippi; 
Mississippi Rev. Cod,, 372. In Kentucky ; 2 Litt. & Swi lloO 
In Alabama; Tonlmif^s Dig. 62t. In Maryland; Maryland 
Laws, act of HU, ch. I'S, §2^3, and act of 1751, ch.li § 4. 
In North Carolina and Tennessee ; act of 1111, ch. 2, § 4^. 

Such being the law, it requires no extraordinary perspicacity 
to pronounce that its effects must be most injurious to the un- 
happy Tictim of slavery. It places the slave, who is seldom 
within the view of more thai> one white person at a time, entirely 
at the mercy of this individual, without regard to his fitness for 
the exercise of power-whether his temper be mild and merciful, 
or fierce and vindictive. A white man may, with impunity, if no 
other white be present, torture, maim, aft4 even murder his 
slave in the midst of any number of negroes and mulattoes. 
Having absolute dominion over his slave, the master or his dele- 
gate if disposed to commit illegal violence upon him, may easily 
remove him to a spot safe from the observation of a competent 
witness Indeed, it is probable few white persons ordinarily re- 
side upon the same plantation, since I find in most of the slave- 
holding States, the owners of slaves are compelled by a consider- 
able penalty "to keep at least one white man on each plantation 
to which a certain number of slaves is attached;" a law which 
would not have been necessary unless a contrary practice was 
prevalent. See Princess Dig. 455, ^^c. (Stroud's Slave Laws, 
pp. 106, 107.) 



And as ye would that men should do to you, do 
ye also to them likewise.— Luke vi. 31. 



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.BAg'l2 



